We are pleased to share some fun design work our team did earlier this year. It is so fulfilling seeing our work in action, and our clients succeeding because of it. A huge thanks to Allison for the design work, to Speedi Sign for the install, and to NuBarter/Revenue for connecting us with this client.

We had a BLAST at TEDxCC 2014. We always do — it’s become sort of a yearly tradition for our team — but we were so inspired by some of the talks that we wanted to share our thoughts and takeaways (along with a few others). For a full list of the speakers, please visit the TEDxCC website.

We sat down with Allison, a member of our graphic design team, to discuss her first year at Clark Creative Communications — check out what she had to say!

Tell us about your favorite project:
One of my favorite projects so far has been working on packaging and branding for Salacia Salts, an all natural body care line that’s inspired by the South and Sea. This is an ongoing project for us and there is always something new and exciting to work on. I love packaging design and this client gives me a chance to experiment and try new things.

Another client that is near and dear to my heart is the Mars Theatre in historic downtown Springfield, Georgia. Springfield is my hometown, so when the City contacted us to help them tackle this daunting project, I was thrilled! The theatre originally opened in 1945, bringing culture and excitement to the downtown area. However, the development of television ultimately lead to its closure in 1957. The theatre remained abandoned, then reopened as an office space until the Springfield Revitalization Corporation partnered with the City of Springfield to begin renovations in 2007. We were hired to brand the new Mars Theatre, as well as handle all of their marketing, advertising and website. It has been so much fun for me to be able to work on this project and see all of our hard work unfolding in my own little town. The Mars reopened in April with a bang, and I cannot wait to see how downtown Springfield develops as a result.

What do you like about being a designer?
Everything! I wake up every day excited to go to work because I truly love what I do. We have the best clients, and I get to be creative and artistic every day. Plus, we laugh so much in the office that it rarely feels like “work”.

Is being a designer different than what you thought it would be?
I had no idea how much time I would be spending communicating with clients and vendors (and the IT guy!) About half of my day is spent on the phone, emailing clients, or in meetings – which is sometimes a welcomed break for my creative brain!

What are your goals for the next year?
To learn – anything and everything! I started at Clark Creative just a few days fresh out of school, and it’s amazing the things that they never taught us. I’ve learned so much in the past year about design, printing, and how to effectively communicate with clients and collaborate with other creatives.

Part of learning is trying different design styles and techniques. Lately I’ve been experimenting with hand-lettering and illustration, and I would really like to hone those skills.

Congratulations on one year at Clark Creative, Allison — we’re looking forward to the years to come!

An oldie but a goodie, the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest was a prank pulled by Charles de Jaeger and the BBC that convinced British viewers that spaghetti grew on trees. The thought that went into this is extensive — not only did they have to have access to the right voice for the project (the authoritative Richard Dimbleby) but they had to figure out how to hang the spaghetti! You can read the full history on the Museum of Hoxes website.

Twitter (sorry, Twttr) fooled a lot of people by suggesting they were going to start charging for their premium “Twitter” service. For people who were expecting an eventual charge for the social media network, this didn’t come as too much of a shock, but the English lit student in all of us cringed. No worries, Twitter is still free — AND includes all letters of the alphabet.

USEFUL FOR: Messing with the grant writer or grammar fiend in the office — try typing all your notes to them tomorrow in chat speak.

They’re just taking care of the national debt… right? In 1996 Taco Bell announced that they were going to purchase the Liberty Bell and have it split its time between Philadelphia and Taco Bell HQ in Irvine. We love the simplicity of this ad — and it’s response. Thousands of concerned citizens called in, and hundreds of print and broadcast outlets covered the story. While you probably don’t have time to take out a national ad, make sure you let the other party know about your prank. The National Park Service and the City of Philadelphia had no idea until they were bombarded with calls!

USEFUL FOR: Designers. “Submit” an ad to your company newsletter or go around and create fake memorial staircases, windows and rooms.

Fun Marketing with a Purpose

For the past couple of years, Clark Creative has been sending out unique holiday greetings to contacts, clients, friends and vendors. The calendars, sent bi-monthly, provide our team an opportunity to have fun, flex our creative muscles, work on our vector illustration skills, and showcase our design work. We’ve learned over the past 9 years in business that the majority of our business comes from referrals. To keep top of mind with our contacts, we send out calendars every 60 days or so. On one side we showcase two month’s calendars and the other two sides are heavy with color and graphics. One side of the freestanding card is a fun illustration – usually with some sort of pun (Cari loves a good pun!) – pairing two holidays. The other is an abbreviated showcase of design work. We find our clients know our work but don’t realize the full scope of our offerings – or maybe they really had no idea we were the creative brains behind a campaign, packaging design project or launch of a new brand in town. This is a fun way to promote ourselves, our clients and skills of the design team at Clark Creative Communications.

Travel is one of my top passions. It inspires, motivates and provides me with great inspiration for current and future projects we’re working on at the studio. While traveling in The Netherlands and Belgium this fall, I spotted a lot of unique graphic signage. Below are some images I snapped with my iPhone through my favorite app – Instagram. With Instagram, mobile phone users can take and share photographs instantly – and share their stories visually with customers, friends and family.

This sign was next to a residence inside of a convent.

Markets were everywhere – vegetables, meats, flowers, antiques, art and books. The fresh food markets were the most amazing (I’m such a foodie!) – and their signs were small explorations of typographic fun to discover.

Some sort of public awareness campaign…

I love seahorses and diecut signs.

A sign made out of bicycle wheels and old bike parts. Clever!

A directory? On the side of a building.

The Mannekin Pis is a not so interesting but very popular (in my opinion) attraction in Brussels, Belgium. However, what was fascinating to me were all the costumes, figures and interpretations of the famous statue throughout the city. From chocolate bars, tacky Christmas ornaments, to cartoons painted on the sides of buildings, the little boy relieving himself can be seen at every turn!

In response to increasing global demand for readily available Web and mobile content, Clark Creative Communications has launched a complete website redesign for PIER Commercial Real Estate. The new site incorporates numerous features to streamline user experience and redefine commercial real estate on the Web.

“PIER stands for Professionalism, Integrity, Excellence, Relationships,” explains PIER owner Ryan T. Schneider. “That’s what we have to offer and we thought it was time to put it top of mind – along with what we do: retail, commercial, industrial, and office.”

Among the unique features of the Clark Creative-designed PIER site are the dynamic image of Broughton Street that changes from light to dark according to time of day, a mobile version of the site that is device-specific, the highly readable single-page format, and a LoopNet property listings portal integrated directly into the site design. These innovations and more bring Clark Creative Web design to the forefront of the modern digital landscape, where clear information, ease of navigation, and aesthetically pleasing design reign supreme.

Clark Creative Communications rebranded PIER commercial with a new brand identity system, signage, stationery and other marketing collateral earlier in the year. See the entire portfolio of work for PIER on their website. View the live website here.

ABOUT CLARK CREATIVE:
Clark Creative is an award-winning design and communications firm based in Savannah that works with businesses nationwide to establish their brand identity and position themselves strategically in the marketplace. Ten years of excellence under founder and creative director Cari Clark Phelps has established Clark Creative as one of the top design firms in the Southeast. Clark Creative is located at 517 E. Gordon St. For more information, call 912.233.1160.

Clark Creative’s Cari Phelps had a dream. But this was a dream like no other. It has actually morphed into a real business! You’ve got to be kidding me, you say. No, we’re serious! It went a little something like this…

“In my dream, a client was talking to me about how she couldn’t launch her bath salt product line because the packaging was too expensive. I recommended she ‘go into the backyard’ and dig. You know, because there are medicinal bottles everywhere. We’re in historic Savannah after all! She could clean those out, package her salts in a free container – and provide a unique bit of history for the customer to take home.”

Of course we all know dreams aren’t made of many realistic details. What Cari did find – along with the help of her husband Patrick – is that Savannah’s Tybee Beach was named after the Euchee Indian word for “salt” and the idea just blossomed from there. Instead of using reclaimed medicinal bottles, the company uses 100% post-consumer recycled materials, glass or reclaimed wine bottles from local restaurants in the area. They developed the concept and brand for a natural bath and body care lined called Salacia.

Salacia, the Goddess of Saltwater, has been brought to life through a series of conceptual sketches after thorough research about the mythological creature. Through their readings, the Phelps’ discovered Salacia was a female nymph, defined as one of a numerous class of lesser deities of mythology – conceived as beautiful maidens inhabiting the sea. Salacia was decorated with the attributes of a queen, her waving hair covered with a net and her hand often seen in a raised position, complete with pincers of a lobster. She was sometimes described to have crab-claw “horns” attached to her temples. In the stories she was said to have carried a fish and was known to travel in a pearl shell chariot pulled by fish-tailed horses (seahorses).

Pulling from these stories and looking for images of sea creatures and other deities, Cari worked with a team of student illustrators from the Savannah College of Art and Design to create what this goddess might have looked like. Requirements for the illustration included a desire for a pen and ink style or etched-like detail in the design and the following descriptors:

Calm

Relaxed

Beauty

Sunlit

Sensual

Several designs (as shown here) were considered amongst the final contenders for their elements or style.

The final selection was illustrated by Bardo; the original solution he proposed is below. After reviewing his concept, Cari decided to have Bardo add a seahorse to either side of the figure and requested her hands to be extend and release handfuls of salt. Bardo kept the lobster tail style braid and a shell earring in one ear… beautiful touches we might add! The illustration below has been used in a small detail on the packaging. We’ll point it out in a future post about the packaging.

The type creation was inspired by copy found on an old map of Tybee Bay and the Savannah River, spotted at an antique shop off of Wright Square. The type was originally sketched out and drawn over, but was too polished looking. After several reiterations, the final type, set on a slight curve was approved.

Despite living in a technology oriented society where information is delivered through texts, tweets and emails, people still use business cards. A professional card creates a lasting impression of who you are and what you do.

Clark Creative Communications has been undergoing a refresh with our brand. With the redesign of our website, newsletter, and logo, we knew it was important to keep our company’s image consistent. Read more >>

The animation production studio Flikli has created a retro 8-bit video montage titled ‘The 8-Bit Games’, featuring various sports that will be played during the London 2012 Olympics.

They have created an animated video with scenes from soccer to synchronized swimming—paying a fitting tribute to the world’s largest sport event. The music tends to wear on the ears – an annoying reminder of what many parents had to deal with in homes across America in the 1980’s.

Identifying colors that work for a client is an exciting part of the design process. When Clark Creative was assigned to develop the brand and logo for Toombs County Development Authority, we conducted a focus group to determine what impressions people had of the Georgia county. Beside being the home to Vidalia onions, Toombs County lies in the center of the state and is easily accessible to 3 major ports of entry and 3 major highways. Three seemed to be TOOMBS’ magic number. Working closely with the development authority the campaign tagline became Commerce+Community+Connectivity. Read more >>

Our last issue of Social Wire mentioned the newest social media addiction, Pinterest. Put down your pins and pick up a palette.

COLOURlovers is an online site that allows followers to discover their inner designer through shared color inspiration. Founder and CEO Darius A. Monsef IV created COLOURlovers while “playing with the idea that all of us see and experience color differently.” Monsef and his team wanted to create a place for people to explore and experiment with color. The site provides a growing international creative community (1,981,676 COLOURlovers) with the tools and services to take a project from inspiration to execution.

Design Seeds is the brainchild of colorist Jessica Colaluca. Colaluca creates color palettes from inspirational photo images that show up in daily emails to subscribers. The art school grad worked as a car designer, shoe designer, color and material specialist and forecaster prior to establishing her website and blog devoted solely to color. Read more >>

During the design process for our website, we realized we had so many projects to show. Sometimes a picture is really only worth a 1000 words. Seeing a designer’s work digitally doesn’t always paint the whole picture. Texture, scale, color and relationship all play a part of the total dynamic of a design. Each component sets the tone of a brand.

We have a lot more to say, so we packaged it up in this nifty demo reel, showing our talents in motion. This piece shows design, animation, editing and story boarding skills. We hope you like it and that it leaves you bobbing your head to the beats and well, speechless. Or a simple jaw drop and the word “WOW!” would be a huge compliment too. We’ll take that!

Paris based art director and graphic designer Vahram Muratyan launched his first Paris versus New York, a tally of two cities in 2010 after an extended visit to New York. In February, Penguin Books released Muratyan’s charming petit livre offering “a friendly visual match between two cities told by a lover of Paris wandering through New York.” This witty and colorful book highlights the best of both cities with original graphics. A must view.

Clark Creative client Edibelles launched their line of Southern gourmet cookies and snack foods just over one year ago to great acclaim. After just one year, their line is expanding (more to come on that soon!). Currently, the line includes Charming Cheddar Biscuits, Perfectly Peach Cookies, Southern Praline Snackin’ Mix, Choice Chocolate Cookies, Beloved Butter Pecan Cookies and Sophisticated Shortbread Cookies. Founder Madeline Warren appeared on WTOC live with her cookies for the hosts to taste. What a sweet start to their day! Read more >>

We don’t think twice about getting check-ups for our bodies, cars, and air conditioners, but when is the last time you had a marketing check-up? It’s always smart to check in routinely and review your business tools and message for attracting new business, and the end of the year is a great time to do it. Consider having your marketing reviewed – not only by your peers and internally – but also by a design professional (yes, like Clark Creative). As technology changes, so does media and the different ways to approach your audience. Here are a few checkpoints to get you started. Read more >>

Graphic design work by Clark Creative of Savannah has been selected for inclusion in two prestigious design publications.

Logo Lounge has produced six volumes of its highly regarded collection “2000 International Identities by Leading Designers.” For the upcoming edition they considered 36,000 logos by talented designers worldwide and narrowed it down to 2,000. Clark Creative’s logo for Bluegrass BBQ (sister restaurant of Savannah’s Cha Bella) was one of those selected and will be included in LogoLounge, Book 7, which will be distributed internationally.

What are those boxes with dots, squares, and triangles that are showing up everywhere? It seems as if suddenly they are on packaging, posters, billboards, websites, business cards and ads. Welcome to the QR code marketing tool.

QR code stands for Quick Response code. In essence, it is a bar code-a visual representation of something that would otherwise be written as text. Read more >>

Clark Creative of Savannah has widened its marketing services for attorneys and law firms with the addition of an experienced legal marketer.

“Over the years we have worked with law firms across Georgia on their logos, websites and printed materials,” said Cari Clark Phelps, Creative Director. “The number of avenues for legal marketing has steadily increased and now we are able to offer marketing support for each of them.” Read more >>

Savannah Mall is a million-square-foot retail shopping mall on the south side of Savannah, GA. As part of the new website design, Clark Creative wanted to create an interactive home page image that would give viewers an idea of the many businesses located on the Savannah Mall property: three banks, an urgent care medical facility, two multiplex movie theaters, an eatery, a gas station, and a branch of the Live Oak Public Library.

The site already included an interactive directory of the interior of the Mall, but how to portray the outside and environs? We all know what shopping malls look like – big buildings surrounded by even bigger parking lots.

We wanted to give a street-eye view and creatively arrange all of the businesses so that they could be seen from one perspective point – something that isn’t really possible. The creative direction was to create an illustration that would attractively group the surrounding businesses and use the anchor stores of the Mall (Target, Bass Pro, Burlington Coat Factory, Dillard’s, Virginia College) as reference points.

Our creative director Cari Clark Phelps took a trip to the Mall and photographed all the buildings on site. She worked with Jen Young, senior designer at Clark Creative, to develop an interesting way to represent the relationship of all the structures.

Using Adobe CS5 Perspective Grid Tool, Jen laid out a perspective.

Then she began to create the individual stores as illustrations. She used some of the on-site photography as basis for her illustrations of the stores (or in CS5 terminology, models), ending up with vector files that could be scaled and edited. Many models needed to be built step by step, with signage, doors, columns and wall detail.

After some experimentation, Jen determined that it was more efficient to create the models as “flat-to-camera” images, then slide them into perspective.

She built and added store models until she had a basic shell layout of the Mall building with anchor business reference points.

Then she began building and adding the models of the surrounding buildings. Finally, she added details of the surrounding area (clouds, shadows, birds, landscaping, and other fun details.)

The next task was the interactive rollovers. We wanted information about the Mall and Mall businesses to be available from the home page, providing the visitor an information snapshot as well as a hyperlink for more detailed information.

We assembled information for each business, and if necessary, built internal pages to house dynamic content such as (constantly changing) movie theater times.

We also wanted the illustration to have some animation, but didn’t want to slow down how the page would load, or use Flash for the main image on the homepage. Cari’s solution? Design slightly larger images of the “hot spots” that would display when rolled over, covering up the base image and giving the impression of animation.

We filled in areas with additional details – like a car in the parking area. In the future, we’re able to display parking options, shuttle info, and/or driving information needed for festivals and events (like St. Patrick’s Day shuttles and Savannah Morning News’ Ultimate Yard sale). Check it out at SavannahMall.com and let us know what you think!

We’re pleased to share the news of our recent wins at the 2010 ADDY awards! A big thank you to our clients that allow us the opportunity to not only work on their projects, but to add creativity, thought and process behind them. While we only entered 5 this year, we’re happy with the results – four awards!

The Official Release for the Best of Show award for “My Savannah Is” campaign:
Savannah, Ga. – The Savannah Chapter of the American Advertising Federation (AAF) awarded its “Best of Show” highest honor to the team of Coastal Marketing Group, Clark Creative and Spyhop Productions last night at its 2010 ADDY awards dinner. The award recognized the exceptional work the team produced for the Savannah Development and Renewal Authority’s (SDRA) television and print ad campaign launched in August 2009. The ADDY Awards held every year in February recognizes the top creative work in advertising, design, packaging, web/interactive and related fields.

The campaign entitled “My Savannah Is…” was developed for the SDRA by the creative team of Karl Strauch at Coastal Marketing Group and Cari Clark from Clark Creative Design. The creative team selected Spyhop Productions’ veteran director Jim Carswell and producer Mari Carswell, to lead the broadcast production, working with cinematographer, Mehmet Caglayan. Motion-graphics were created by Andrew Davies with Paragon Design Group and still photography was produced by Kevin Banker of Banker Optical Media.

In all, the team of Coastal Marketing Group and Clark Creative were awarded four awards. Spyhop Productions also won a Silver award for Cinematography for the campaign.

“As you can see, it was truly a collaborative effort and a lot of fun” said Clark (Art Director), who along with Strauch (Writer) served as Co-Creative Directors for the entire SDRA campaign effort.

“It’s a good feeling” added Strauch, who also penned the new Downtown Savannah tag line It Never Gets Old. “This is a creative community and there was a ton of good work out there. We did not enter as much volume as we saw from others but we won the whole enchilada for a 5th award at the end of the night – and it was the best recognition of all.”

The award caps off a recent run of brand development & creative assignments that the team of Coastal Marketing Group and Clark Creative has collaborated on in recent months – and economic development appears to be a niche. Both Strauch and Clark have worked together on assignments for various municipal chambers, economic development bodies and tourism clients not just in Georgia but the southeast region including South Carolina and Florida.

However, on this night, it was all about Savannah and pure teamwork. The SDRA bought into the vision, the approach and contributed greatly to the creative team’s success and the creative team itself spent months in focus groups, research and planning even before concepts were generated. Early in the process, Strauch had also sought out Spyhop Productions, knowing its reputation for quality work. Ultimately, Spyhop was selected to execute the broadcast effort adding tremendously to the final product.

“Jim doesn’t just hang lights and roll the cameras out” said Strauch, “he and Mari spend a lot of time dissecting the concept and improving upon it. That’s what we were looking for in a collaboration”.

“I think one of the reason’s this campaign worked is because the team focused on connecting emotionally with the viewer” said Jim Carswell. “The day and age of “selling” is gone. Today’s marketing needs to resonate with and engage those we are trying to reach.”

As Gold and “Best of Show” award winner, now the team moves on to see how it fares regionally in AAF competition.

“Maybe we have a good shot at winning that too” mused Clark. “After all, the brand is Downtown Savannah and shows most beautiful place in the world. Who wouldn’t love that?”

The Process:

Check out behind the scenes shots of the photo and video shoots. This concept sketch (below), drawn by SCAD graduate Vincent Zawada, is one of many we presented in the process of pitching our ideas to SDRA. We envisioned showing a coffee house scene at Gallery Espresso. In the end, it made much more sense to show the exterior of the business, showcasing it’s beautiful location next to one of Savannah’s beautiful historic squares.

More about the ADDY’s…
“The ADDY’s is the advertising industry’s largest and most representative competition, recognizing and rewarding creative excellence in the art of advertising.

All across the country, local entrants are vying for recognition as the very best in their markets. Local winners then compete against other winners within their regions in one of 15 District competitions. District winners are then forwarded to the National ADDY Awards competition. Entry in the Savannah Advertising Federation ADDY’s competition is the first step toward winning a National ADDY’s.

The competition begins with a call for entries in late December. Then selection of the most creative entry in each category is effected by a scoring process in which a panel of judges evaluate all creative dimensions of every entry. In each category, a Gold ADDY is recognition of the highest level of creative excellence and is judged to be superior to all other entries in the competition. Entries that are also considered outstanding and worthy of recognition receive a Silver ADDY. The number of awards given in each category is determined by the judges, based on their opinions of the quality of work in that category.” SOURCE

Clark Creative Communications started working with Hussey Gay Bell & DeYoung around 2006. Eight years later in 2014, we sent out an invitation to their Marketing department, inviting our last contact at HGB&D to attend our 10 Year Anniversary celebration.